


Under Ground

by Missy



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Gen, Violence, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-24 23:45:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2600753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eponine must brave the plague-infested streets of Paris to rescue her brother and deliver him to safety on the Rue Plumet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Ground

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Zombiefest '14, prompt: 147. Les Miserables -- Eponine -- Eponine must survive the night and protect Gavroche when the gutters of France endure a calamity more dangerous than revolution - a rat-spread plague of the undead.

Eponine was a mistress of self-deception. She could convince herself of almost anything – which was why she didn’t trust her eyes when she spied the event occurring before her bewildered eyes.

She saw them, though they couldn’t see her.

They rose in the depth of night, between the gendarmes shifts, shambling down the street with their heads bowed, long, perfumed hair trailing over their eyes, bloody-red talon trails dug into the loose material at their hipbones. No one knew but Eponine, she who clung to the shadows like an alley cat, knowing all, until she felt bold enough to speak out. She was the one who played unblinking witness as they fell upon a hapless john and ripped him apart, inch by bloody inch, red mouths an o of outrage as they scrapped for every last ounce of meat.

No words could save Eponine’s skin now. Whatever disease that had warped the girls of the docks would likely corrupt all of France before the soldiers ended their lives. Eponine well knew the cost of ravenous desire. She simply prayed that she’d survive the evening. 

She had one goal now, and it drove her to the town square at top speed, to the place where her brother slept within the belly of the Bastille Day elephant. She battled crowds of peddlers and happy couples as she fought her way there. What she noticed most of all were the children – so many children – and all of them so oblivious to the future sprawling menacingly before them. 

Gavroche was still unaffected when she found him, though he seemed tired, hot and dusty when she shook him awake. She pulled her brother close, carefully tucking down his threadbare cap. “Close your eyes. Don’t open them ‘til I tell you.”

“What for?” He tried to struggle in his sister’s arms, but Eponine had a will as steely as his and it was hard for him to move. “You’re hurtin’ me, Ep! What’s gone wrong?”

“Long story,” she muttered, pulling him along the thick construction of the elephant’s inner workings until she found the exit at its foot. “Just don’t let go of me and don’t look.”

He tucked his greasy face in the curve of her shoulder, and Eponine squared her jaw and charged for the open door.

The scene outside was calamity already. The ravenous woman took hold of the easiest prey, feasting on weak beggars, on the surprised, on the foolish. Eponine tucked Gavorche closer and made a dash down the street and up a back alley. 

She’d found a drooling monster that had once been the neighborhood druggist eating a rat.

It dropped the flailing mammal when it saw a larger quarry. “Brains!” he shouted, but she dodged his hands and ran on. From the corner of her eye she saw a pack of sailors devouring an elderly women. She felt Gavroche gasp in her arms.

“Don’t look!” she demanded, cutting left through another series of alleys. These should take her to the center of town, to the safest place she knew – to the rich ones and the Rue Plumier. 

It was just beyond Dawn when she started slamming her fist into the iron gate. To her surprise it was Cossette, trusting Cossette, who opened the door with a butcher’s knife in her hand. “Are you hurt?” she dithered, pulling Gavroche out of her arms. “Is he whole and unafraid?”

“I ain’t afraid!” he shouted.

Cossette gave a sigh of relief, dropping the knife in the dirt before Eponine. “Please come in,” she said. “Papa said the town’s gone mad, we’re to leave as soon as we can. I’ve made an excuse,” her cheeks flushed. “We’re delayed. We’ll go look for Marius in the morning. Please, stay here, take a bed, have a meal where it’s warm.”

“Might as well. Ain’t got anything else to do.” Eponine felt a crystal-bright pain pierce her breast as she imagined him being torn apart, but she ignored it, plucking up the knife. She followed the fortunate girl into the kitchen, to safety, as dawn broke out over a bloodstained France.

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction uses characters from **Les Miserables** , all of whom are the property of the **estate of Victor Hugo**. No money was earned from the writing of this piece of fanfiction, and the author makes no legal claim upon the characters within.


End file.
